Today's consumer receives, via delivery senders, numerous advertisements, promotions, and other correspondence from business entities. Every day various business senders dispatch significant number of delivery items to their customers. A business sender sending numerous delivery items may desire a delivery fee discount from a delivery service provider. A delivery service provider, such as the United States Postal Service (USPS), may offer a postage discount to a business sender in exchange for the business sender affixing an 11-digit barcode to each delivery item sent by that business sender. The 11-digit barcode may uniquely identify an address for a delivery point. Further, the 11-digit barcode may allow the delivery service provider to automatically sort the mail in delivery sequence order.
A recipient address information may consist of a recipient name, a street address, and a ZIP™ code. In many locations, such as an apartment building, a condominium, a trailer park, an office building, or an outlet in a shopping mall, multiple recipients share the same street address and the same ZIP™ code. Use of a mail recipient name in combination with secondary address information, such as an apartment number, a suite number, or a lot number, may enable creation of a unique address for each delivery point.
A significant percentage of items destined for delivery require a secondary address information to uniquely identify a delivery point. When the secondary address information of the delivery item is missing or incorrect, the delivery service provider cannot use the corresponding 11-digit barcode for automated sorting of that delivery item in the delivery sequence order. Such items will require additional handling by the delivery employee prior to delivery, thereby increasing the time required to serve customers on the postal carrier's route. It is therefore desirable to provide methods and systems for development and maintenance of a database containing secondary address information by relating recipients' names to their correct, complete addresses and providing that information to business senders in a secure manner without violating privacy laws.